RE: Request to include missing HTML tag interface specs in html5.idl

While this seems like a nice idea, would it require implementations to change the prototype inheritance model for said tags? And if so, it seems like a useless performance problem to have to traverse the prototype chain of a completely empty prototype just because of a convenience for automatic tools. I'd prefer not to introduce empty interfaces where no new real functionality is needed.

-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Dimitry Golubovsky
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:17 AM
To: public-html@w3.org
Subject: Request to include missing HTML tag interface specs in html5.idl

Hi,

There is a number of HTML tags whose IDL interfaces only inherit from HTMLElement, but do not add any attributes or operations to their parent.

These tags were historically listed in [1]:

=====================================
HTMLElement
All HTML elements derive from this class. Elements that only expose the core attributes are represented by the base HTMLElement class.
These elements are as follows:

HEAD
special: SUB, SUP, SPAN, BDO
font: TT, I, B, U, S, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL
phrase: EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ACRONYM
list: DD
NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT
ADDRESS, CENTER, PRE
=====================================

As a probable consequence, IDL specifications for html2 and html5 [2] do not have interface specifications for these tags (e. g. no "interface HTMLSpanElement").

For the purposes of automatic derivations of language bindings to
(Web) IDL interface specs, it would be very convenient to have all HTML tags covered by such specifications, without exclusion. Having a separate (even empty) IDL interface for each distinct HTML tag would make it easier to differentiate between them at the type level of a target language.

I am thus suggesting to include empty interfaces for these tags into subsequent published versions of html5 IDL specification.

A sample IDL (autogenerated for a recent project of mine) can be found at [3].

The shell script that generated it can be found in a Makefile at [4], search for the "$(IDLSRC)/addtags.idl" target.

Thank you.

-------------------------------------
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-DOM/level-one-html-971209.html


[2] http://code.google.com/p/es-operating-system/source/browse/trunk/esidl/npapi/include/w3c/html5.idl?spec=svn1065&r=1065

seems to be a pretty recent copy

[3] http://darcs.haskell.org/yhc/src/translator/js/W3C/addtags.idl


[4] http://darcs.haskell.org/yhc/src/translator/js/Makefile

--
Dimitry Golubovsky

Anywhere on the Web

Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 19:29:36 UTC